Cheese Toast Gets Wired at Chasen’s
Used to be, bright young MBAs dreamed of becoming investment bankers. But today, it’s all about Internet start-ups--even in the restaurant business. The new Chasen’s, which has been on Canon Drive in Beverly Hills since 1997, has been purchased by a baby online company, iLive Inc. The 2-month-old company hopes to capitalize on the restaurant’s historic relationship with Hollywood by Web-casting live music events and parties, including Chasen’s famed Academy Awards after-bash.
We were skeptical when we first heard about the deal. Chasen’s? Isn’t that the place our grandparents go for cheese toast and chili? Does iLive Inc. honestly believe oldsters are going to sit in front of their computers to watch a virtual battle of the bands live from the restaurant’s exclusive Jockey Club?
In a word, no.
The goal is to capture the fancy of a younger crowd, because even in its new incarnation, the eatery hasn’t been able shake its tired image. ILive Inc. President and Chief Exec Marcia Allen wants to change all that.
Allen, an investment banker who started her career as a controller for Taco Bell Corp., said her company has access to every event booked at Chasen’s. And, she added, “the world wants to watch.”
The launch of iLive’s Web site (at https://www.iLive.com) is planned for December.
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Pay no attention to the rumor behind the curtain that Vogue editor Anna Wintour is in talks with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to become head of its Costume Institute, according to spokesmen for Vogue and the Met.
Richard Martin, the institute’s curator since 1993, died Monday, stirring up old gossip in fashion circles that Wintour, whose recent marital woes have been widely reported, would be his successor.
Reps from the museum and the magazine claim to be in the dark about how the story took wing.
“There was never any truth to that rumor to begin with,” said Vogue director of public relations Patrick O’Connell. “I don’t think the occasion of his death is the time to report a rumor of no founding or bearing.”
“We have given no thought to what happens next,” said the Met’s director of communications, Harold Holzer. He said acting curator Myra Walker took over several months ago, after Martin took ill, but would not say whether she is a candidate for the post.
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The charming John Loring, design director for Tiffany & Co., is in town this week to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Beverly Hills store and the launch of his new book, “Tiffany Jewels” (Harry N. Abrams, $60).
The lavishly illustrated tome traces Tiffany from its beginnings as a “stationery and fancy goods” store founded in 1837 to its position today as one of America’s most prominent jewelers.
The New York firm has many more California connections than one would expect, and not just in Hollywood. San Francisco’s Jane Stanford was the proud owner of a four-strand pearl necklace acquired by Tiffany when Empress Eugenie was forced to put her crown jewels up for sale in 1887, due to anti-monarchist sentiments in France, writes Loring.
In an interview, Loring talked about the surprising sources for some of the raw material Tiffany has used for its pieces.
“Jewelry was made out of stones from places we find unimaginable today,” Loring said. “Tiffany turned its back on Europe’s vocabulary of ornament and developed a purely American design based on nature and made of American materials.”
And who would have guessed the enormous black pearl Tiffany showed at the 1889 Paris Exposition came from the Gulf of California?
Booth Moore can be reached at booth.moore@latimes.com.
